Seagate has finally killed its FreeAgent brand. First announced in September 2008, the FreeAgent was an early, and successful, take on non-commodity external storage. Over the years the brand took on many forms — from the 2.5-inch Go to the Dockstar to Theater Dock — but ultimately it morphed into the FreeAgent GoFlex. This introduced the first real innovation to the line: the modular connection. Officially known as the Universal Storage Module (USM) connection, it’s a SATA standard that Seagate pioneered, but that any company is free to use. That connector type is being kept as Seagate take a serious move towards clarifying the brand and simplifying its image. With death of the FreeAgent comes Seagate’s Backup Plus.

The big news with Backup Plus is not actually the drives — aside from the new design it’s all stuff we’ve seen before — the update is the software. Companies like WD and Seagate have made extensive effort so that buyers actually use the software that comes with their external hard drives, and over the past few years the included tools have actually gotten to the point where they are worth installing.

The headlining feature is with this release is the ability to backup images from Facebook and Flickr. Using those sites’ APIs the drive’s software is able to retrieve your images from the cloud and create a local backup. The API is only able to grab the crunched image (not the original, full resolution one), but that’s a limitation of the API. And while Facebook and Flickr are the only services available now, more will be coming in future updates.

That probably has you wondering why — it’s not like Facebook loses a lot of images or Flickr is going to be shutdown next week (well…). There are still reasons why you’d want to do this though, including access to your media when you don’t have an internet connection, fast access for when you want to use the images (downloading them from a service one-by-one is a pain), and the simple desire for redundancy. With storage being cheap and plentiful, and people requiring interruption-free access to all their data, why not have a local copy? Of course, that’s the opinion of a storage company, but it could be useful for people who are lax about syncing their devices and backing up their devices.

There are some advanced features as well. The coolest one is a trickle upload tool which is able to send videos en masse to YouTube. This will be a great way to upload a lot of video to the site with minimal intervention from the user.

In addition to the social networks tools, Backup Plus can do all the stuff you’d expect from an external hard drive — like backup your entire system, build a custom backup plan, and work with both a PC and a Mac. Upgrades from the old software include scheduled backups, file level backup, and cloud backup. The only dropped feature appears to be encrypted backup, which the GoFlex did, but the Backup Plus cannot.

Also new for Backup Plus: the main connection will be USB 3.0. The company will not even make a USB 2.0 adapter. There will be a $99 Thunderbolt sled available for all models. The other connector type will be FireWire 800 which, like Thunderbolt, will be sold separately (though for much less).

Seagate‘s Backup Plus will initially come in three flavors: Portable (500GB, 750GB, and 1TB), Slim (500GB), and the Desktop (1, 2, 3, and 4TB). The Desktop model is the full-on 3.5-inch drive while the Slim uses a low z-height (read: skinny) drive, so the enclosure is super thin. The drives will be available in black, blue, red, and silver.

Pricing will be as follows: Portable 500GB, $119.99; 750GB, $129.99 and 1TB, $139.99. For the Backup Plus Desk 3.5-inch drive: 1TB, $129.99; 2TB, $149.99; 3TB, $179.99 and 4TB, $249.99. Backup Plus for Mac prices will be the same, though the selection will be more limited.